Experiment 51

“Could K4 be its own letters rearranged? A count of the known letters against the carved ones”

Every earlier transposition experiment put a substitution (the table) after the reordering. Here the substitution is taken away: if K4 were only a rearrangement of its message, the carved letters would be the message's letters in another order, and the letter counts alone decide it.

revertedstatus
experiment 6parents
1 stime, all phases
0candidates
0/24known letters
unclocked
1

The experiment method

What the method does with the 24 known letters.

If the fourth messagethe message The 97 letters of English that Jim Sanborn wrote and enciphered. were just its own letters shuffled, like an anagraman anagram The same letters in a different order, with none added, removed or changed., then every letter of the message would be somewhere on the copper. We know 24 letters of the message. So we count: does the copper have enough Es, enough Ns, enough Rs to spell them? One shortfall is enough to rule out every way of shuffling at once.

Words in the margin are defined on the glossary page.

1.1

The method at work

The carved letters go in at the top; the reading comes out at the bottom.

OBKRUOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWEASTNORTHEASTOTWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBBERLINCLOCKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEKCARIN: THE COPPER, ALL 97 LETTERS, THE 24 KNOWN PLACES IN ACCENTletters the 24 known letters need, against how many the copper hasE3 / 2A2 / 4S2 / 6T3 / 6N2 / 3O2 / 5R2 / 4H1 / 2B1 / 5L2 / 4I1 / 4C2 / 2K1 / 8E: three needed, two carved (places 45, 93)needed by the known letterscarved on the copperneeded but missingOUT: NO READING; NO REARRANGEMENT OF THE COPPER CAN HOLD THE KNOWN LETTERSEASTNORTHEASTBERLINCLOCK
the count

A pure transposition only moves letters, so the message must use exactly the copper's letters. EASTNORTHEAST and BERLINCLOCK together need three Es; the copper has two.

the escape

Deleting any one carved letter does not help, and neither does the question mark before OBKR. Changing one carved letter into an E would: 93 ways.

the bound

Every pure transposition, every route and every key, is dead at once by counting, unless the copper has a carving error.

2

Best candidate against the known letters

This experiment produced no candidate: the search ruled everything out before a full text was built. Its product is the bounded negative in section 7.

3

Walkthrough, by hand

Redo the method on a few letters with pencil and paper.

  1. Write out EASTNORTHEAST and BERLINCLOCK.
  2. Count the Es: E-A-S-T-N-O-R-T-H-E-A-S-T has two, B-E-R-L-I-N-C-L-O-C-K has one, so the message needs at least three Es.
  3. Count the Es on the copper: OBKRUOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFLRVQQPRNGKSSOTWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBNYPVTTMZFPKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEKCAR has two, at places 45 and 92.
  4. Two is less than three, so no rearrangement of the copper can put three Es where the message has them.
  5. Check the other letters the same way.
the worksheet: the first steps by hand, on squared paper
COUNT THE LETTERS: WHAT EASTNORTHEAST AND BERLINCLOCK NEED, AND WHAT THE COPPER HASEASTNORTHEASTEASTNORTHEASTBERLINCLOCKBERLINCLOCKEs needed: 2 + 1 = 3Es carved: 2, at places 45 and 93Two is less than three, so no rearrangement of thecopper can put three Es where the message has them.Every other letter has enough copies.Pencil and paper: one count. It closes every puretransposition at once.
4

Worked example, generated

The same steps run by the code on the real letters.

letter  needed by the cribs  on the copper
  A            2                4
  B            1                5
  C            2                2
  E            3                2   short
  H            1                2
  I            1                4
  K            1                8
  L            2                4
  N            2                3
  O            2                5
  R            2                4
  S            2                6
  T            3                6
5

Hypothesis, for a cryptanalyst

Family, key space, the constraint under test, and the clues it reads.

C9(a) reads 'the letters sitting there in plain sight' as a pure transposition: the ciphertext is a permutation of the plaintext, and C8(d) proposes KRYPTOS as a transposition key. Any permutation preserves the letter multiset, so the 24 crib letters must be a sub-multiset of the 97 carved letters. Count each crib letter against the copper, for the carved 97, for the 98 with the K3 question mark (C18), and for each one-letter deletion (the copper with a spurious letter). If any count fails in every reading, every transposition, keyed or route, single or double, KRYPTOS-keyed or not, is excluded without enumerating keys. Bounds: exact.

6

Prediction

Written before the run; the result decides it.

At least one crib letter is short on the copper in the 97 and 98 readings and under every one-letter deletion, so pure transposition is excluded; it survives only if one carved letter is wrong and should be that letter. Zero candidates.

7

Method

  1. Count the 24 known letters by letter.
  2. Count the carved letters.
  3. List every letter whose need exceeds its supply.
  4. Repeat with the question mark added and with each of the 97 letters deleted.
  5. Say which single carving error, if any, would make the counts possible.
8

Result and bounds

The harness's record: candidates, gates, loss, and the negative result this experiment leaves behind.

0candidates returned
0passed every gate
0/24known letters, best
–lowest loss
34champion before

Crib letters short on the copper: {'E': (3, 2)}; with the question mark: {'E': (3, 2)}; one-letter deletions that fit: 0. A single carved letter changed to E would make the counts fit (93 ways).

What was searched, as the harness recorded it.

family
pure transposition (any permutation of the 97 carved letters)
need
E
3
A
2
S
2
T
3
N
2
O
2
R
2
H
1
B
1
L
2
I
1
C
2
K
1
short carved
E
3, 2
short 98 with question mark
E
3, 2
deletions that fit
none
replacements that fit
93
replacement letters that fit
E
replacement examples
place 1: O to E, place 2: B to E, place 3: K to E, place 4: R to E, place 5: U to E, place 6: O to E

How this experiment sits among the others is on the lineage page; its family's open hypotheses are on the families page.

Rendered from the record on 2026-10-18 12:26 UTC; updated after every experiment.
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